Live Free Or Twi-hard!

The Jewish Film Festival ends, only to be replaced by a phenomenon more arduous and terrifying than that of any story about pizza in Auschwitz. Yesterday evening to the delight of millions of girls and the horror of millions of boys in the country, the second part of the Twilight saga hit cinemas.

It's been less than a year since the first film hit cinemas across the world, but fan fever has infected I'd say about 1 woman in 3. To be honest, I barely paid the film any attention last year. It seemed like another mash up of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and an Ann Rice novel, but without any of the wit or talent of those two writers (although I'm not a big fan of Lestat and co. I have to admit that the book was pretty good). Turns out I'd totally underestimated the power of the 'girl falls in love with boy who turns out to be a vampire tale'. Twilight was going to be huge.

The sheer focus of some of the 'Twihards' I've met is scary. It's like millions of girls and women have suddenly become Star Trek fans, except you replace the pointy ears with pointy teeth.

Like every cinema, my cinema is also playing 'New Moon' which is the new Twilight film's proper title. Apparently this one has vampires AND werewolves in it. Is there going to be an awesome monster mash up? Sort of. There is fighting, but there's also lots of teen angst and beautifully furtive looks from pretty boys and girls who look like they've had Vidal Sasoon prepare their hair every time they step outside. Not really my cup of tea.

For months I'd been criticising the film much to the dismay of a lot of the girls I know who are obsessed with Robert Pattinson's hair (he's the guy who plays the lead vampire that the girl falls 'irrevocably in love with' - keep up!). They told me I should actually watch the film before slagging it off.

Fair point.

About a month ago I picked up a bargain basement DVD of Twilight for a few quid in HMV. I watched it. I am now trying to sell the DVD on ebay.

I'm not going to pick the film to pieces, because there's no need to. It does it all by itself. Watch it and you'll see what I mean. I was quite impressed with Bella's (she's the girl who falls in love with Robert Pattinson who's the vampire, remember?) facial expression. She didn't change it once for the entire film. It was like watching someone who's thinking that they may or may not be constipated. You don't need to see the film to check this expression out - just take a look at the millions of posters for New Moon around at the moment. This expression apparently was supposed to make me believe that she was hopelessly in love with Edward (Robert Pattinson - guy who's a vampire) despite the fact that he initially seems to think she's farted when they first meet.

The film is very silly.

But that's not to mean that I can't admit that maybe I'm missing something to truly appreciate the film. A vagina perhaps.

Anyways, I'm happy that the film is going to take a lot of money at the Box Office. Anything that puts bums on seats at the moment is fine by me. I may never understand the appeal of the film, but that's not to say that I don't appreciate it's commercial value. Besides as Kevin Smith rightly pointed out this year at the Comic Con convention, we shouldn't spend all our time slagging off Twilight as nonsense or taking the piss out of it's fans, because at the end of the day it has made fantasy more accessible to an audience that traditionally avoids fantasy and science fiction like a plague.

So New Moon may not be the best acted, best plotted or even a million miles close to a decent fantasy film, but maybe just maybe, it will bring a new audience into a genre that is always treated with sarcasm and disrespect by mainstream thinking.

I'm still not going to watch it though.